Beyond Feminism? Jineolojî and the Kurdish Women's Freedom Movement

Abstract

AbstractJineolojî, the women's science proposed and developed by the Kurdish Women's Freedom Movement, has become central to its transnational organizing both in the Middle East and in Europe and the Americas. Activists in the Kurdish women's movement critique positivist and androcentric forms of knowledge production as well as liberal feminism. They instead propose Jineolojî, which aims to rediscover women's histories and restore women's central place in society. Based on a series of interviews with Kurdish women involved in developing Jineolojî, this article first situates Jineolojî within wider transnational and decolonial feminist approaches and then draws out the main ideas constituting Jineolojî. We focus on the ways Jineolojî speaks to ongoing discussions within transnational feminist knowledge production. Our article critically assesses the claim of Kurdish women activists who present Jineolojî as a new science and paradigm that goes beyond feminism while developing our argument that Jineolojî represents an important continuation of critical interventions made by marginalized women activists and academics transnationally. Moreover, our article illustrates that Jineolojî provides a helpful ideological underpinning for and epistemology of Kurdish women's political struggle for gender-based equality and justice.